After an early morning run with Col France and Michael, we said goodbye to Lake Baikal and left Natalia’s after breakfast to drive back to Irkutsk. Our first stop was the hospital where a doctor took another look at Katharine’s foot to make sure the stitches were doing well. While Col France, Masha, and Katharine were in the hospital the rest of us wandered around the local market. It was a normal fruit and vegetable market with a few interesting additions including a random two humped camel chilling outside the market and a bunch of big tanks selling kvas by the bottleful. When they finished at the hospital (all was well, her foot was looking good) we went to a hotel where we had a room booked to stash all our bags and then got lunch on our way to the Decembrist museum.
The Decembrist Museum is in the old residence of Sergei and Maria Volkonsky, two members of the Decembrist movement. After the war of 1812 the Russian forces that occupied parts of western Europe returned to Russia with lots of ideas about how the European society lived. The young officers came back inspired by the European democracies and wanted to make some changes in Russia. They set up societies that were Masonic in style, and secretive, and prepared a rebellion against the tsarist regime in general and the practice of serfdom in particular. They wrote up several constitutions and proposed changes to Alexander I but he refused them. When Alexander I died and it became evident that Nicholas I would take the throne the Decembrists decided to act in the interim. They marched on what is now known as Decembrist Square in St Petersburg on 14 December 1825 and while over 3000 people were present, the lack of preparation time and the desire to get the rebellion started before Nicholas took the throne led to a failure of the rebellion. The Decembrists were captured, the main leaders were arrested and those who had a high enough place and influence in society to manage to avoid the labor and prison camps were sent for resettlement in Siberia. The new Tsar wanted them killed but because they were of high influence in society and he was new and unpopular he was only able to get death sentences for 5 of the top leaders. Their executions, however, were particularly gruesome with three of the ropes breaking when they were released. While Russian tradition states that if the rope breaks it is a sign from God of the person’s innocence and they should be pardoned, Nicholas ordered new ropes brought and they were killed anyway. All in all 121 people were sent to Siberia, mostly to the eastern part of the Lake Baikal.
The museum talked about various aspects of life in Siberia and focused on the Volkonsky family in particular. Maria and Sergei were married when Maria was 18 and two years later Sergei was arrested. Maria was one of the few women who was given permission to join her husband in Siberia. The stories of these women were really fascinating. Only 11 women were allowed to join their husbands and as part of that they were forced to give up all titles, money, estates, everything. That it meant that any of their children that were born in Siberia had no rights as Russian citizens and therefore would be unable to get a job or work in the western parts of Russia. These women however were beloved in the areas they went to. They worked very hard and, in the spirit of the Decembrists, their work was for the benefit of the entire of society. Maria opened the first hospital in the region and the other women who followed their husbands set up schools and worked to educate all the children in their new homes and communities.
The house itself had an interesting story as well. This particular house was built in 1838 and in 1844 the Volkonsky family was given permission to move from the small Siberian town they were sent to to the larger city of Irkustk and they moved their physical house with them. After the amnesty of the Decembrists the house was sold as used as a trade school for orphan boys until 1911. During Soviet times it was turned into a communal flat that housed 20 families at once. The restoration of the house took 10 years and includes all the original stoves. When the restorers were working they tore away layers of Soviet wallpaper and found the original wallpaper. They took samples of it and sent away to St Petersburg to a company that recreated the wallpaper, making the wall decorations authentic to the original house. There were some interesting original furniture pieces in the house as well including:
-A Grand Piano made in 1831 in Belgium and brought from St Petersburg on carts. The room in which the piano stood was designed specifically to provide the best acoustics for the instrument and concerts are still given there.
-A school desk used by the Vokonsky’s son Michael that showed that boys used to do their schoolwork standing so as to improve their posture
-A pyramid piano that was made in Vienna. There are only 2 of these types of instruments remaining in the world today whereas the one in the museum is the only one still playable
-A “winter garden” which was an indoor garden that allowed Maria to grow the plants that she missed from home. She was able to grown lots of tropical plants including pineapples, watermelons, tangerines, and lemons.
The Volkonsky family had an extensive library that had over 5000 items. They collected books from all over Russia and when they were allowed to receive parcels from their families, they would be sent books. They left the library to the city of Irkutsk but a fire in 1879 destroyed 80% of the buildings in the city, including a majority of the library. One of the most interesting things we learned at the museum was the Leo Tolstoy and Sergei were cousins. When Leo was young (26) and Sergei old (70) they would have many discussions about the ideas of the Decembrist. Tolstoy was so inspired that he wanted to write a book about the Decembrists but he would have never been allowed to do so in his time. Instead Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and based the main character Bolkonsky off of Sergei, changing just one letter in his name and modeling his character after this interesting man and movement.
After the museum we walked back to the market and bought fruits and vegetables for our next train journey before wandering around the city some more. It was the hottest day we’d had yet, upwards of 31 degrees Celsius, but we still wandered around and saw the city of Irkustk. On our way back to the hotel we walked through a large pedestrian shopping area that led to the State Department store. This state department store was nothing like the Gur and was a bit shadier and far less classy. We then wandered through a large park across the street from our hotel, the largest park in Irkutsk. In the park was a World War II memorial, an eternal flame, and several statues honouring various Russian soldiers. Also in the park were countless wedding parties taking pictures and practicing Russian traditions like the husband carrying his new wife across a bridge and being publicly drunk. We went grocery shopping for the train journey, bought a picnic dinner to eat in the park, and finished it off with some ice cream. We then all piled back into the car and drove to the train station where we got on train to Mongolia.
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